December 18, 2018 | International, Naval
RIO DE JANEIRO – The Brazilian navy launched its first domestically produced attack submarine on Friday, a move that French boat designer Naval Group hopes will lead to additional sales in the region.
The new vessel, named the Riachuelo, is a copy of Naval Group's Scorpene-class submarine, though slightly bigger, at 1,870 tons, to enable more crew and longer range. The submarine program's objective is protecting the vast resource-rich waters all along the country's coastline, dubbed the Blue Amazon, outgoing Brazilian President Michel Temer told an audience at the launch ceremony at Itaguai naval base outside Rio de Janeiro. Defense News attended the launch and accepted airfare and accommodations from Naval Group.
The Riachuelo, considered roughly 80 percent complete at this point, is the first product of the Brazilian navy's $8.9 billion Prosub program. She is scheduled to begin sea trials next summer. Three identical, diesel-propelled boats are slated to follow by 2023, based on a technology-transfer contract with the French shipbuilder. A joint venture between Naval Group and local construction conglomerate Odebrecht, named ICN, assembles the boats at the new Itaguai submarine shipyard built for the program.
The real prize for the Brazilian navy, however, will only come afterwards. Beginning in the mid-2020s, the country's military wants to start building what Naval Group chief HervéGuillou calls the “ultimate ambition” – a program of nuclear-powered submarines.
Design work for the first nuclear submarine is already underway, with the French shipbuilder providing “assistance,” as a company brochure puts it, and the Brazilian navy in a more prominent role. The sea service here will manage all aspects of the power plant development, for example.
“Brazil is absolutely critical for Naval Group and other European players to be present here,” Guillou told reporters at Naval Group's Rio de Janeiro office. That's because European countries, even those spending two percent of GDP on defense, a NATO-wide objective, are unable to match the growth rate of South America's expected military spending, he said.
The foray into Brazil and other emerging markets offers the opportunity for “critical mass” to help bridge dips in demand at home, according to Guillou.
The French shipbuilder already has its eyes on another target, Poland, which the CEO said he wants to similarly develop into a submarine hub for regional navies. European rival shipyards Saab and Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems are also in the running for that country's program, however, each with local work-share ambitions of their own.
Friday's launch ceremony ended with Temer and his successor, far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, jointly pressing a large red button initiating the machinery for lowering the Riachuelo into the water.
“Brazil has a vocation for peace and is building its submarine not to threaten anyone or unsettle the calm of international waters,” Temer was quoted as saying in a local Reuters report. “Brazil is building submarines because a nation with more than 7,000 kilometers of coastline cannot do without tools to defend its sovereignty and it marine riches,” he said.
Bolsonaro had no speaking part in the ceremony.
July 11, 2024 | International, Aerospace
The country's Moscow-friendly government has walked back on a combat-helicopter deal for Bell AH-1Z Vipers, championed by the previous Cabinet.
November 23, 2020 | International, C4ISR, Security
Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency has awarded its new multivendor cloud contract to a few companies, the spy organization confirmed Friday. Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, IBM and Oracle all confirmed to C4ISRNET they had been awarded the CIA's Commercial Cloud Enterprise contract, which will serve as the intelligence community's cloud environment. NextGov, which first broke the news, reported Google as an additional winner. The CIA declined to confirm specific vendors to C4ISRNET. “We are excited to work with the multiple industry partners awarded the Intelligence Community (IC) Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) Cloud Service Provider (CSP) contract and look forward to utilizing, alongside our IC colleagues, the expanded cloud capabilities resulting from this diversified partnership,” CIA spokesperson Chelsea Robinson said. The CIA declined to provide the contract value, though contract documents obtained by NextGov in 2019 stated it could be valued in the “tens of billions.” The draft request for proposals, released in February 2020 and obtained by C4ISRNET, was considering a 15-year performance period, a five-year base and two five-year options. The C2E contract is a follow-on award to the intel community's Commercial Cloud Services contact. AWS was the sole provider for that contract, which was worth $600 million. “We are honored to continue to support the intelligence community as they expand their transformational use of cloud computing. Together, we're building innovative solutions across all classification levels that deliver operational excellence and allow for missions to be performed faster and more securely,” an AWS spokesperson said. A spokesperson for Microsoft, which won the Defense Department's single-award, controversial Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract, said the company was “eager” to work with the intel community. “We applaud the intelligence community in advancing its cloud strategy to the next phase in order to take advantage of the latest commercially available cloud technologies,” the AWS spokesperson said. Jay Bellisimo, IBM's general manager for the U.S. public and federal market, said that the company “is proud to further its collaboration with the U.S. federal government.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2020/11/20/cia-awards-intel-communitys-cloud-contract-to-several-vendors/
February 15, 2021 | International, Naval
New frigates are being packed with more combat capability than comparable ships of allies Murray Brewster It will be 2031, at the earliest, before the navy sees the first of its new frigates; a setback brought about partly by the fact Canada, Britain and Australia are still feeling their way around how to build the ultra-modern warship. The outgoing president of Irving Shipbuilding Inc., which is in charge of constructing combat ships for the federal government, said he anticipates steel will be cut on the first of the new generation high-end warships by mid-2024. "We have been trying to take an honest look at where we are and what it will take to build the ship," said Kevin McCoy who recently announced his retirement from the East Coast shipbuilder. The current estimate is that it will take up to seven-and-a-half years to build the surface combatant, a timeline being used by Britain's BAE Systems Inc., which is constructing the first of what's known as the Type 26 design. Both Canada and Australia are building their own variants. "Early on [in the shipbuilding process] estimates are not very good," said McCoy. "Early estimates are not very good for price; they're not very good for size; they're not not very good for duration," McCoy said. "The British ship has a seven-and-a-half year build cycle. So, we're locked in. We said our build cycle will be seven-and-a-half years as well." If they can find ways to speed up the process, they will, he said. ANALYSIS Battle of the budget: DND gears up to defend cost of new warships in the new year Serving military member sues DND over mould exposure on warship Ottawa awards $2.4B contract to finish building navy's supply ships If that timeline holds, it means the federal government's marquee shipbuilding strategy will be two decades old by the time it produces the warship it was principally set up to create. While Irving has been pumping out smaller, less complicated arctic patrol ships and Seaspan, in Vancouver, is building coast guard and science vessels, the strategy conceived by the former Conservative government was driven by the necessity of replacing the navy's current fleet of Halifax-class frigates. Originally, when the shipbuilding strategy was unveiled, it envisioned Canada receiving the first new frigate in 2017. A lot of water, wishful thinking and even money has gone under the bridge since then. Building off existing design The current Liberal government, since taking over in 2015 and embracing the strategy, has been opaque in its public estimates of the build time; suggesting, in some documents, a delivery time in mid-2020s while other more internal records have pegged the first new frigate in the 2027 timeframe. The Department of National Defence, in a statement, acknowledged some of the design and build intricacies are now better understood, and because of that; the first warship will be "approximately 2-3 years later than the previous estimate." A spokeswoman echoed McCoy's remarks about finding ways to move construction along. "We continue to look for efficiencies and are actively working with industry to accelerate the project in order to deliver this important platform to the RCN as soon as possible," said National Defence spokesperson Jessica Lamirande. One of the ways they could do that, she said, would be to construct some, less complex modules of the warship early, the way it has been in the navy's Joint Support Ship project at Seaspan's Vancouver Shipyard. $1 billion and counting: Inside Canada's troubled efforts to build new warships Industry briefing questions Ottawa's choice of guns, defence systems for new frigates McCoy, a blunt-talking former U.S. Navy admiral, suggested the expectations going to the surface combatant program were ultimately unworkable because the federal government came in expecting to do a so-called "clean sheet" design; meaning a warship built completely from scratch. It was the shipyard, he said, which ultimately inched the federal government toward building off an existing design because of the enormous risk and expense of purpose-built ships, a position the Liberals adopted in the spring of 2016. The selection of the British Type 26 design by the Liberal government has spawned criticism, a court challenge and will figure prominently in upcoming reports by the auditor general and the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Combat capability packed into ship The nub of the complaints have been that the frigate is not yet in the water and is still under construction in the United Kingdom. The defence department acknowledged that adapting the British design to Canadian expectations and desires will take a year longer than originally anticipated and is now not scheduled to be completed until late 2023, early 2024. Canada, McCoy said, can expect to pay no more $2.5 billion to $3 billion, per ship as they are produced, which is, he claimed, about what other nations would pay for a warship of similar capability. "This is a big ship, lots of capability" he said, indicating that full displacement for the new frigate will likely be about 9,400 tonnes; almost double the 4,700 tonnes of the current Halifax-class. How much will Canada's new frigates really cost? The navy is about to find out PBO pushes up cost estimate for Canada's frigate build by $8 billion McCoy said what is not generally understood amid the public concern over scheduling and cost is the fact that the Canadian version of the Type 26 will be expected to do more than its British and Australian cousins. Where those navies have different warships, performing different functions, such as air defence or anti-submarine warfare, Canada's one class of frigates will be expected to perform both because that is what the government has called for in its requirements. Dave Perry, a defence analyst and vice president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, has studied the program and said he was surprised at the amount of combat capability that was being packed into the new warship. "On the one hand, Canada's one [class] of ship will have more combat capability than many of the other classes of ship that our friends and allies sail with, but it also adds an additional level of complexity and challenge getting all of that gear, all of that firepower into one single floating hull and platform," he said. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-shipbuilding-decade-frigates-1.5912961